'I have to have coverage in order to make sure that I don't die': GOP lawmakers get blasted on Obamacare at town hall

MJ Lee/TwitterLawmakers got an earful from constituents in Tennessee on Thursday night during a town hall to talk about the future of the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law better known as Obamacare.

Republican Rep. Diane Black held a town hall about the law at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was confronted by multiple constituents who pushed back against the GOP's plan to repeal and replace the ACA.

One man, Mike Carlson, confronted Black about the repeal, saying the law had allowed him to gain access to lifesaving coverage.

"I am an overweight person. I have to have coverage to make sure I don't die," he said. "There are people who have cancer that have that coverage that have to have that coverage to make sure they don't die. And you want to take away this coverage and have nothing to replace it with. How can I trust you to do anything that's in our interest at all?"

Another person in attendance, Jessi Bohon, pointed to her Christian faith as a reason to support the law.

"It's in my understanding that the ACA mandate requires everyone to have insurance because the healthy people pull up the sick people, right?" she said. "As a Christian, my whole philosophy in life is to pull up the unfortunate. So the individual mandate, that's what it does, the healthy people pull up the sick."

Bohon also criticized a proposal favored by Republicans that would put sicker people in high-risk pools for those with preexisting conditions, saying "we are effectively punishing our sickest people" by using the pools. Bohon pointed to previous state high-risk pools, which have exhibited high costs and poor coverage.

Bohon asked why the government wouldn't just "fix" the ACA or provide Medicaid for all instead of repealing the law.

Black pushed back on both Carlson's and Bohon's statements, according to CNN, saying the Republicans' would replace the ACA with a law that would offer coverage to all Americans. Black said that while the ACA had provided coverage for more than 20 million Americans, there were still people lacking insurance and the GOP planned to fix that.